FREEDOM FOR ALL PEOPLE
COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 27 Nov 2008
Mairead Maguire, Nobel Peace Laureate
Speech delivered at the Sabeel 7th International Conference
East Jerusalem, Nov. 19, 2008
Dear Friends,
I am very happy to be here with you and to be invited to speak to you. I want to take this opportunity to thank Rev. Naim Ateek and all those who helped organize this conference. I am deeply grateful for the freedom to come to East Jerusalem and the freedom to speak and meet with you.
In this the 2lst century many of us take freedom for granted, but not everyone has freedom here in Israel/Palestine. I realized this, yet again, when I told a Palestinian friend that I was attending this conference, and he told me that though he was born in Jerusalem he was not allowed to come into East Jerusalem. This brought home to me that East Jerusalem is indeed an integral part of the occupied territories of Palestine, and many Arab people born here are not allowed into East Jerusalem. Many Arabs who live in East Jerusalem live in fear of their homes being demolished or of expulsion by the Israeli government (such as the Al-Kurd’s family home in the Sheikh Jarab Neighbourhood of East Jerusalem, where the Supreme Court has ruled on the expulsion of this family from their home.)
Since l967 almost 2O thousand Palestinian homes have been demolished in the West Bank. The expulsions and demolitions continue almost daily, along with continuing developments of illegal settlements for Jewish settlers in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. A few days ago I visited the site in West Jerusalem where the Israelis are building a Museum of Tolerance upon an ancient Muslim cemetery from where the bones of the Muslims’ ancestors are being exhumed. This is deeply painful to the Muslim people, and I would like to appeal for this project to be cancelled. The Israeli Supreme Court, whose role is to uphold human rights and international laws, has agreed to this desecration of Muslim graves and continues to rule in favour of many inhumane and illegal policies against the Palestinians and against those Jewish citizens who have the moral courage to challenge this discrimination and destruction of Palestinian homes.
In spite of all this, I myself have great hope for change in the Middle East. I have hope because for almost a decade now I have been coming to Palestine/Israel and in that time I have met with many deeply committed people who have dedicated their lives to working for a peaceful, just solution to what is one of the longest running conflicts in the world. To all these people I offer my support for a non-violent struggle for human rights and democracy. I know that all occupations and violent conflicts sooner or later come to an end, and that here in this part of the world occupation will end, justice will reign, and reconciliation will flourish between the Israeli and Palestinian peoples.
But before peace can flourish, its roots of freedom, equality, justice, must be nourished with courage and truth. It takes courage to speak truth to power when the consequences are often suffering. The truth shall indeed set your spirit free, but in this oppressive occupying power the truth will also be physically, emotionally, and in other ways, very costly. We must challenge not only the Israeli state injustice, but also the Palestinian armed militant insurgency groups to reject violence and use nonviolent civil resistance – a political strategy that is not only morally right but that, in our Northern Irish experience, does work. Still there have always been people in history willing to tell the truth at great personal cost, and it is to such people that we, the human family, remain indebted.
We are indebted especially to all those who continue to tell the truth about Nakba. This is the 60th anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba, in l948, when 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes. Today the occupation continues also with the wall, annexation of more Palestinian land, and the building of an apartheid racist system by the Israeli government.
Another great injustice is currently being perpetrated upon the Palestinian people by the Israeli government with the blockade of Gaza. Recently I went with the Free Gaza Movement by boat from Larnaca to Gaza to help break the siege. This siege is a policy of collective punishment imposed on 1.5 million Gazans by Israel because they voted for a Hamas government. Collective punishment of civilians is against the Geneva Convention. The people of Gaza have been closed off completely from the outside world for two and a half years now, and their community and infrastructure is slowly being destroyed. There is a shortage of medicines, food, electricity and the basic necessities of life.
But perhaps the worst form of torture for human beings is not being able to hold and touch those they love. The people of Gaza are not allowed to go across the now closed borders to be with their families. Hundreds of wives are parted from their husbands in the West Bank, over 700 students cannot go abroad to take up their positions in universities, sick people cannot leave to get hospital treatment, over 8O percent of the children are suffering from malnutrition and have no milk. Gaza is like a huge prison, except that the Israeli occupiers’ policy is to deprive the inmates of sufficient food and medicines for survival. This is the world’s largest open-air prison. The international community and the UN should resume economic assistance as they have a responsibility towards the civilian population of Gaza, which is not dependent on whether Hamas satisfies the political conditions set by Israel or whether ceasefires hold.
In face of all these injustices being imposed upon the Palestinian people the EU, the European governments, and much of the world community have not only remained silent but have connived with these injustices by cutting off the financial aid necessary for their survival, being thus accomplices in these ongoing crimes against humanity.
I was shocked and saddened by the suffering I witnessed, but I took hope from the warmth and resilience of the people of Gaza. They want dialogue and unity with other Palestinians in the West Bank, and dialogue with the Israeli government based on justice and equality. After meeting with Prime Minister Ismail Haniyah, from Hamas, and speaking at the Hamas Parliament, and at a meeting with over 100 political representatives from all the political parties in Gaza, including Hamas and Fatah, I took away with me real hope that more and more Palestinians recognize that Palestinian National Unity and nonviolent civil resistance is a political strategy that will work and give them great strength.
Increasingly they are recognizing that a divided Palestinian people, armed struggle and militarism will not solve their problems. I hope all those who want peace in the Middle East will support the rightful struggle of a Palestinian nonviolent civil resistance for an end to the occupation, a free Palestine, and the upholding of all UN Resolutions, including the UN Resolution 194 – Right to return of refugees.
As part of this nonviolent civil resistance struggle, I support the divestment/disinvestment campaign and the campaign to end USA’s military support ($10 million dollars per day) to Israel, which helps fund the military occupation of Palestine, as well as other boycotting moves. I also believe that the Swiss government, as repository of the Geneva Convention, should convene its members to discuss Israeli non-compliance of its obligations under the Geneva Convention. Also, the General Assembly of the United Nations should move to suspend Israel from U.N. membership until it complies with all UN resolutions required of it.
It is to be hoped also that the Israeli government will recognize that militarism, occupation and repression only feed more violence, and that they will enter into serious dialogue and negotiations with Hamas and other Palestinian leaders recognized as the democratically elected voices of the Palestinian people. These negotiations should be within the framework of international law, particularly international humanitarian law and human rights law, and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice and Security Council resolutions.
This year the state of Israel also celebrates its 60th anniversary. I recognize the right of all people, including the Jewish people, to a peaceful existence. I also recognize the state of Israel, but believe that many domestic and foreign policies of the Israeli government are racist, upholding an apartheid system. I believe such policies do not reflect the profoundly wise Jewish values of justice and peace. In an interdependent, interconnected world, where countries are made up of multi-ethnic and multi-religious groups, we are challenged to build government structures that reflect the plurality of its citizens and whose laws are inclusive of all members of that society.
Governments cannot marginalize or maintain a second-class citizenship for a whole section of the population; such injustice will result in violence. We learned this lesson in Northern Ireland, and are now moving towards a power sharing, all-inclusive government. I believe that, to have genuine peace, the Israeli government need to move from a Jewish state to a power-sharing democratic state with equality and inclusiveness of all its citizens, not just the Jewish ones.
There is great hope for peace in Israel/Palestine, as this is a political problem with a political solution. The Israeli government and the USA, by treating Palestinians fairly and with real political will, can help solve this historical conflict that has resulted in this inhumane occupation. I recognize that there is a deep fear of ethnic annihilation amongst many Israelis, but we, as the human family, must all learn to deal with our fears non-violently and realize that our best hope for human security is not in occupation but in implementation of just and equal policies for all people, and making friends with our enemies.
Our security, as a human family, does not lie in militarism, nuclear weapons or war. Another courageous voice that reminded us of this was the voice of Mordechai Vanunu. Mordechai told the world that Israel had nuclear weapons. He was concerned that possessing such weapons endangered Israel, as it too could become another Hiroshima. For his act of truth telling he was punished by the Israel government and continues, 22 years later, to be held in East Jerusalem, unable to leave Israel or speak to foreigners or to foreign press. Those of us who work for a nuclear free Middle East and a nuclear free world remain indebted to Mordechai, for his sacrifice on all our behalf, and we hope that Israel will uphold its international obligations to human rights, letting Mordechai go free, and give leadership in the Middle East by abolishing its nuclear weapons.
We are all challenged to move from a culture of violence to a culture of nonviolence. Last year the Nobel Peace Prize Laureates launched a Charter for a World Without Violence (copies available in English/Hebrew/Arabic), in which they endorse the words of the World Health Organization, ‘Violence is a Preventable Disease’. I would encourage you to study it and campaign for your government, religious institutions and NGO’s to consider endorsing this Charter.
The Charter’s nonviolent message is not new. Two thousand years ago Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies, do not kill’. The cross is for me the greatest symbol of nonviolent love in action, and in the words of the late Fr. McKenzie, ‘You cannot read the bible and not know that Jesus was totally nonviolent’. Also to remember the words of an early Christian, ‘I am a Christian, I cannot be a soldier’.
What a great contribution we can make to help bring peace to the world, if we only take the message of love and nonkilling seriously and live by it. Then we could, with our brothers and sisters of all faiths and none, build a non-killing, non-violent Middle East and world together.
Peace, Salaam, Shalom, Shanti,
Mairead Maguire
November 19, 2008
Holy City of Jerusalem
This article originally appeared on Transcend Media Service (TMS) on 27 Nov 2008.
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